Every morning at 7, the new Chicago permits that are worth money to you.
PermitWire reads Chicago's public permit feed every night and sends you the residential remodel, addition, and new-construction permits valued at $25,000 and up, with the permit holder's business name on each one. One email. One CSV. No portal to log into.
Who this is for
Chicago: subs
When a GC pulls a new construction or renovation permit, the electrical, plumbing, and HVAC packages are still ahead of them. Chicago's feed names the permit holder on the record, so you know whose job it is and where. That is a bid list, delivered daily.
Chicago: suppliers
Every qualifying permit is a materials order that has not been placed yet: framing, fixtures, wire, pipe, HVAC equipment. PermitWire sends you the job, its reported value, and who holds the permit, the week the job starts, not after the truck is loaded.
A note on what this is not: the contractor who pulled a permit already has that trade covered, and the homeowner has already chosen them. PermitWire is built for the sale next to the permit, not for reselling the permit holder's own job back to their competitors, and it never includes homeowner phone numbers or emails. Business and property data only.
What the 7am digest contains
Each permit that clears the filter, with: issue date, property address, work class and a plain description of the job, the reported valuation, the permit holder's business name and trade, and a link to the source record. The same list arrives as a CSV you can sort, filter, and hand to whoever works it.
New second floor addition to an existing single family residence, N Oleander Ave. Permit holder: Jack's Construction & Remodeling, Inc.
Full building permit for a 3-story, 3 dwelling unit building, S Fairfield Ave. Permit holder: Fargo Group, LLC.
Excerpt entries are real records from the public Chicago permit feed, pulled Oct 12, 2026, with house numbers removed for this page. Paid digests carry the full property address from the permit record. One feed quirk, stated plainly: Chicago's feed does not publish the property ZIP code, so digests carry the full street address without a ZIP.
Pricing
| Chicago, one trade focus Every qualifying Chicago permit, with the ones relevant to your trade tagged and sorted first: permits whose wording names your trade's work, permits held by a contractor in your trade, and new construction. Your matches lead the email; the full list follows, so a quiet day for your trade is never a silently short digest. Get the digest |
$49/mo |
| Chicago, all trades Every qualifying permit in Chicago, plus a weekly view of what the busiest permit holders pulled, in Monday's digest. Get the digest |
$79/mo |
First 14 days free on either plan. Month to month, no annual contract, cancel in one click. For scale: national project-data services start at $129/mo per market on annual contracts, and permit-data platforms built for data teams start at $599/mo. Shared lead marketplaces charge per lead, and the lead is typically sold to several contractors at once. A month of PermitWire costs less than one of those leads, and the list is yours alone to work.
Comparison prices are the vendors' published prices as of October 2026 (ConstructConnect Starter, Shovels Basic) and published lead-marketplace pricing ranges. Check current vendor pricing before you rely on them.
FAQ
Where does the data come from?
The City of Chicago's own public open-data feed for building permits. It updates daily. Every digest entry links back to the source record so you can verify it yourself.
Which permits make the cut?
Remodel, addition, and new-construction permits with a reported valuation of $25,000 or more. Repairs, change-outs, demolitions, signs, temporary structures, equipment-only permits, and small same-trade permits are filtered out: the filter reads each permit's own wording, so a like-for-like replacement "same as existing" or a whole-job service swap is out even when its class and price would otherwise qualify. One honest caveat: Chicago's feed does not flag residential versus commercial, so a small number of entries are commercial jobs in the same permit classes. Each entry is tagged with a residential/commercial signal based on the permit's own work description, and the filter is documented, not magic.
Do you sell homeowner contact information?
No. Never. PermitWire carries the property address, the job details, and the permit holder's business name. Homeowner phone numbers and emails are not collected and not sold. That is a legal and ethical line the product is built around.
When does the digest arrive?
By 7am Central each morning, as an email with the full list and a CSV attachment. Each digest covers every qualifying permit issued since the previous one, and each permit appears in exactly one digest. If nothing new cleared the filter since the last digest — most often on a Monday after a quiet weekend — no email goes out rather than an empty one, and the next digest covers the gap.
How does the free trial work?
Fourteen days of the full digest for your trade focus, free. If it does not surface work worth chasing, cancel before day 14 and you pay nothing. No annual contract after the trial either: billing is monthly and cancellation stops the next charge.
Which cities are covered?
Chicago at launch. It was chosen because its feed is daily, carries valuations, and names the permit holder. More metros will be added only where a feed meets the same standard.
I need a different trade filter. Can I get one?
The $49 plan tags one trade focus — electrical, plumbing, HVAC, roofing, concrete and masonry, carpentry and framing, painting, flooring, or solar; pick it on the signup form. The $79 plan covers all trades in Chicago. If your trade is not listed, write to us from the signup form anyway. New focuses are added based on what subscribers ask for.
Get the digest
Tell us where to send the 7am email. First 14 days free.
Pre-launch signup: your email is stored so we can send the digest when it launches, and your 14-day free trial starts with the first issue. No email is sent and nothing is charged until then.